


Somedays are just Not Good Days

by facelesshellion



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Chuck POV, Chuck doesn't know everything about him, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Olive and Emerson are the best friends a guy could ask for, Referenced but not explicitly stated disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facelesshellion/pseuds/facelesshellion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck may be Ned's childhood sweetheart and adulthood girlfriend, but even she doesn't know everything about him. Olive fills in the gaps as much as she can, but for once her silence isn't because she's keeping secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somedays are just Not Good Days

**Author's Note:**

> There have been some family issues lately that I sort of wanted to vent about. This isn't a mirror to my situation, but sometimes writing about something similar to what's going on in my household helps me more. I sort of drew on personal experiences, experiences of friends and family members, and a lot of online articles to write this, so there are some aspects that I might not have completely right. I didn't want to write this from Ned's perspective because I, personally, have never had depression to a severe degree and I didn't want to misrepresent that, and also because the lesson at the end that Chuck learns is an important one that I need to keep in mind myself when dealing with some people I know. So I sympathize with Chuck quite a bit in this, but I hope I didn't put too much of my own personality into her. Fingers crossed, eh? 
> 
> Thanks for reading! This might be edited later, might not be. Who knows~? Hope you enjoy!

The first time Chuck encounters one of Ned's capital letters Not Good Days is a couple of weeks after Olive returns to her apartment and they decide to be roommates. Her morning, for the first time since she moved into Olive's apartment, is not greeted by the warm smell of fluffy scrambled eggs and the faint sound of bacon crackling in its own grease.

Rather, she wakes to a deafening silence. No lights are on, despite Olive’s early bird tendencies, the television has yet to spew the daily news into her sleepy, dazed brain as she has just grown accustomed to, and, as mentioned before, the smell of breakfast cannot be found, even as she takes a huge, long whiff of the morning air. With said whiff, she can also ascertain that no windows have been opened, which Olive usually loves to do first thing when she wakes up. 

She claims it’s to greet the sun, but Chuck suspects a secret fondness for pollution-scented air from the farm-raised girl. 

Rolling out of bed, tentative due to the unknown factors disrupting her morning groove, she tugs her comforter over her shoulders and ventures into the living room. 

The initial awkwardness from becoming roommates with a new-ish friend had been forcefully ignored and beaten into a pulp. Both of them, desperate for a friend that isn’t Ned, even if their only real connection comes from the piemaker, wanted their arrangement to work. A couple of hiccups were expected, but for the most part, Olive and Chuck strived to be the best roommate possible. If Chuck asked expressly for the window bed, then Olive capitulated and asked for preferential space in the bathroom, which Chuck respected and allowed. Their balance, tentative emotionally, works for them as long as they try not to think about the Pie Hole’s owner while with each other. If this is one of Olive’s roommate quirks, like keeping booze hidden under their mattresses like teenagers with porn magazines, then Chuck feels that she can respect the gray mornings interspersed with cheery ones. 

After getting an explanation, of course. Chuck’s experience with living space, while limited, instilled a necessary desire to know the reasons behind what the other living mate does. Lily and Vivian, for example, refused to let Chuck leave the house for five days if they saw her crying because they feared her going to school feeling upset would make her have the same phobias they did. Ned disliked when she left dirty dishes in the sink because at his old boarding school his hands would be smacked with a ruler if he didn’t clean up after himself after a midnight trip to the kitchen. 

Reasons help Chuck rationalize and understand why people act the way they do. If she can’t read about their motives behind their actions, then she has to either find out herself and infer or ask them to tell her. Olive, for the most part, has been the most transparent with her motives for what she does since Chuck’s death, and that’s part of the reason why Chuck appreciates and struggles to continue her friendship with her. 

Fuzzy orange slippers firmly engulfing her feet and her pale green comforter-cocoon in place, she steps into the living room, opens her mouth to greet Olive, and stops abruptly. 

Ned (tall, gangly, bashful and adorable Ned) sits on the floor, back braced by one of their many bookcases, knees curled against his chest, and his head down. Olive sits too, on the chair across from him, tying her shoelaces in place with careful precision. She glances up at Chuck, shakes her head empathically, and finishes her bunny-ears. 

“Ned, you ready to go downstairs?” Olive’s voice, soft as a fluffy, down pillow, breaks the silence. Chuck hurriedly dashes into the kitchen and out of sight. Close enough to hear, but not to see; a trick learned from cases with Emerson. “I’ll meet you down there. Just need to leave some food out for Digby. We’ll keep him up here for today so he’s not underfoot.” 

Ned’s entire body tightens for a brief moment before he uncurls and nods, just a little. He’s out the door with four long strides, closing the door behind him as gently as Olive had treated him. 

Chuck waits a beat. Then two. One more for good luck, before stumbling out from behind the refrigerator. 

“What’s wrong with Ned?” Chuck asks, voice cracking. Emotion or the morning, she doesn’t know, but either way, she feels shaken. “Did something happen?” 

Olive’s head tilts from side to side as she attempts to answer. “Well, I mean- Nothing happened, no one’s dead, if that’s what you’re wondering, and as far as I know, it’s not an anniversary of anything bad today either so that’s out too-“ 

“So what was it?” Her worry gets away from her. She sounds impatient, and she knows it, but the complete apathy she saw on Ned’s face unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. 

Olive shrugs helplessly. “Sometimes Ned has- Not bad days, because those are a completely different story, but he has, ah, Not Good Days. Capital letters, in case you were wondering. They’re kind of a big deal.” 

“’Not Good Days’?” Chuck repeats. “What does that mean?” 

She fiddles with the dog food, blonde hair pulled back with a thick headband and her attire more casual than usual. “They’re not that frequent and he refuses to talk to anyone about it, and he has medication that helps, but sometimes Ned just has days where he doesn’t talk. He’s been good since you’ve arrived—Basically on cloud nine, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go this long without a single Not Good day!—So I’m not surprised he finally had one.” 

“He just doesn’t talk? At all?” 

“At all,” She confirms. Digby whines at her feet and she absentmindedly shushes him, pouring food into a bowl and patting his head. “He can usually tell when one’s about to happen, so he gives us a bit of a notice now. I check in with him for a couple of days early every morning, find out if he slept and ate and all that jazz, and then on the day where I check in and he hasn’t done any of it, I know. 

“There was an incident awhile back on one of these days and now Emerson and I know to keep an eye on him when he gets like this. The Pie Hole had been in a rough patch financially and it looked like it’d have to close down for a bit there. He had a whole Not Good Week, and-“ She stutters off and rolls her neck around. “Well, that’s not my thing to share. It’s not a secret, he’ll talk about it to you I bet, but I’m not going to be the one to tell you because then you’ll look at him all puppy-dog eyes all day and he doesn’t need that.” 

Confused, worried, and more than a little upset, Chuck asks, “What does he need then?” 

Olive gives a half-grin, half-grimace. “Just act normally. Bake your little cup-pies, tease him a bit, and don’t be upset when he doesn’t answer or press him for answers. And if he looks like he’s about to bolt, don’t touch him—Well, not like I need to tell you that, but it’s a general warning to all of us—but block the doorways. The best thing is to keep him busy until it passes.” 

Chuck has more questions, which must be obvious on her face because Olive makes excuses and hurries to the Pie Hole before the conversation can continue. 

She skips a shower that morning, pulls her hair back, and goes light on the makeup in order to arrive downstairs in fifteen minutes flat. 

She’s disheartened when Ned doesn’t look up when she arrives. 

“Looks like it’s going to be a busy morning,” She comments, grinning through her disappointment. Groups of people already sit at the counter, sharing coffee and discussing news. A family with two daughters and a son, possibly on a road trip and making a pit stop, look exhausted but happy with their slices of banana cream pie. “Better have your baking mitts and rolling pin ready.” 

He nods. 

And that’s it. 

The rest of the morning tries all of their nerves. Olive’s forced cheerfulness and Chuck’s falsely enthusiastic happiness reek of concern, but Ned doesn’t seem to mind. 

Chuck’s worry increases when she watches Olive discreetly lock the back door to the kitchen. Ned never looks up from the dough he’s rolling. 

He doesn’t smile at her like she’s the sun on his rainy day, doesn’t joke and continue her half-hearted efforts to tease him, doesn’t meet her eyes at all. 

He pointedly does not make a single cherry pie that day, even after Olive makes vague comments about customers requesting it. 

Around dinnertime, Emerson stalks in, orders half of a rhubarb pie to go, and barks, “Piemaker, get your ass out here. There might be a cold one across town.” He and Olive trade looks as Ned’s nod keeps his gaze on the ground. 

Olive holds Chuck’s hand, presumably to keep her from offering to go along. 

The superfluous motion does nothing. For once, Chuck allows Ned to grab his coat and leave without her to go to a crime scene without a fuss. 

When they’re gone, Chuck rounds on Olive. 

“Is that the best thing for him right now? Going out to look at dead bodies and solve cases with dead people when he’s like that? I’m trying to trust you on this but I can’t see how that’s going to help him with anything except to make him worse!” 

Olive scoffs. “They’re not going on a case. Emerson is going to drive him around for the afternoon.” 

Chuck stares. 

Sighing impatiently, she explains, “By the time they get back later tonight, Ned will be asleep against the passenger’s side window. He was burning out just then and planning to go back to bed. Not good for him to go to sleep that early when he’s like this, so Emerson will keep him up for awhile with obnoxious radio music and use him as a sounding board for knitting plans or crime solving or what the hell ever until like nine or something, at which time they will start to drive back, Ned will fall asleep, wake up just enough to get up to his room, and collapse onto his bed to go to sleep for real. 

“Hypothetically, at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. It usually does, though we’ve never tried it when you’ve been around so we’ll have to be a little carefuller.” 

The crowd has mostly died down, as it usually does until the dessert rush comes. They stack plates and start washing, keeping half an ear open for the door to click open in the event of more customers’ arrival. 

They work in silence until Chuck can’t handle it. 

She blurts, “He didn’t even look at me. At all, today. Not once.” 

“Don’t take it personally. That’s just how he is on Not Good Days. It’s nothing you or me or Emerson or even fucking Digby did.” Her Brillo pad scrapes viciously against the sides of a pie dish. “He just gets sad sometimes, I think. I don’t know. I’m not a therapist. But it’s not because of anything or anyone.” 

“But I mean-“ 

“What?” 

“I’m his- I’m his girlfriend. Shouldn’t I be able to cheer him up?” Chuck’s frustration causes her to drop a handful of forks into the soapy water. “I think that was in the job description somewhere and I should be able to do that because it was horrible seeing him like that and I couldn’t do anything-!” 

“Oh sweetie,” Olive, with sudsy hands, tugs Chuck into a hug. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but things like this—Things that are a part of Ned, things that deal with that big dumb brain of his and its chemistry or whatever—You’re not going to be able to fix it. You’re not a cure-all. And if or when it starts to affect him every day, believe me, you won’t be the first one dragging him to a doctor to get him right again.” 

Chuck sniffles and buries her face into the shoulder presented to her. “I feel so helpless.” 

“I know, I know,” Olive soothes. “It’ll pass. By tomorrow he’ll be okay, I swear. It’s scary, but it’s not here forever, I promise. We can’t do anything but give him a helping hand. Metaphorically, I mean, because he’s skittish on good days, but he reeeeeally hates touching anything that isn’t pie dough fruit or cream or anything pie-related on Not Good Days.” 

(The next couple of days, even after Ned smiles and acts like himself with no trace of his Not Good Day except for him being a little kinder to Olive and a little more helpful to Emerson, Chuck religiously researches the latest psychiatric books she owns, buys newer ones to fill in the gaps, Googles the hell out of the names of Ned’s medication, and tries to be better prepared for the Not Good Days that will be in the future sooner or later. 

But that’s a story for another day. For now, she and Olive pull apart when new customers flood in, wipe each other’s tears off, and finish off another day at the Pie Hole, waiting for their boys to come home.)


End file.
